Groundhog strike forces red flag, extensive FW48 damage in Montreal

Friday's lone 60-minute practice for the Canadian Grand Prix sprint weekend in Montreal was upended when Alex Albon's Williams struck a groundhog — also described as a marmot — on the exit of Turn 6, sending the car into a wall and bringing out a red flag at about the half-hour mark. Albon walked away uninjured, but his FW48 had to be recovered from the track and the circuit cleaned before running could resume. The stoppage cost the team more than half of the session; the FIA had already tacked four minutes onto FP1 after a Liam Lawson breakdown and added a further 15 minutes to account for Albon's crash.

Team principal James Vowles called the damage "extensive," citing the front and rear corners and potentially the floor, front wing, and suspension. Reports of which side took the brunt conflicted — some described heavy damage down the entire left side of the car, others pointed to the right side and rear. Either way, Williams now faces urgent repair work on the FW48 to get it ready for the rest of the weekend, and the lost track time gutted Albon's preparation for sprint qualifying later that day, scrapping a planned soft-tyre run and complicating setup work on top of the mechanical uncertainty about the car itself. Replays of the collision weren't shown on the world feed but spread quickly on social media.

Vowles described the episode as frustrating, noted that marmot encounters have happened at the circuit before, and called wildlife collisions "one of the risks of this circuit," even recounting that Albon's mother had joked she feared he'd have to "pay to adopt a family of marmots." For Albon, who had set the ninth-fastest time earlier in FP1 and badly needed the running, the timing could hardly have been worse.